The present disclosure relates to information systems.
Certain applications have high bandwidth requirements and strict synchronization, latency, and reliability requirements for communications. Robot-assisted surgery, for example, requires a high bandwidth to transmit control and feedback signals in real time. The synchronization and latency requirements of such applications are strict, because ideally there should be as little lag as possible between the movements of a surgeon and the movements of the robot. In these applications the communications must be highly reliable, because a data transmission error could injure a patient.
One conventional communication system used in robot-assisted surgery uses several hundred paths (e.g., wires) to connect a surgeon's control console to robotic arms. The use of hundreds of paths, however, makes setup and maintenance of the system cumbersome and requires substantial room to route all of the paths.
Conventional communication standards provide acceptable performance in some areas but are lacking in others. The IEEE-1394 interface standard, for example, provides synchronous, serial, point-to-point communication. IEEE-1394 channels have a guaranteed bandwidth but only can provide synchronization to within approximately 125 microseconds. Such performance may not be sufficient for certain applications requiring tighter synchronization.